


at cross-roads

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hymn to Demeter - Homer, Original Work
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21950977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: Whatever else has been said, whatever happened before or after, I chose to eat the pomegranate seeds.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	at cross-roads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lnhammer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lnhammer/gifts).



> I hope this is what you were looking for! "At cross-roads" is an epithet of Persephone, as is everything else Hades calls her in this fic.
> 
> Warning: reference to unspecified forced marriage and implications of (...successful yet not fatal?) suicide

pomegranates blossom bloody your teeth  
closed eyes, chin up mistress Kore, your crown  
now awaits you, underneath - and what wreath  
can anoint your lovely hair in the ground?

Whatever else has been said, whatever happened before or after, I chose to eat the pomegranate seeds.

You must understand, Hades spent a very long time telling me about how I could rule his kingdom and then he offered me those seeds and nothing else. It was not subtle. I think he was a little disappointed at the time that I only ate three; but then Hades has always enjoyed being able to say no to Zeus. So few manage it. He can hardly be blamed for wishing he could say make that no final.

The other thing you need to understand is that I was dead. Narcissus is an instrument of trance, and if you take too much you die. It isn't a marriage garland. 

Therefore, rightfully I already belonged to Hades. Demeter and Zeus had exactly the same right as each other to demand me back, which was none, for all I loved one and detested the other. I had resigned myself to no escape from marriage but death. My mother, being older and more powerful, was not content with that end for me, and so Hades found himself producing my shade for the gods.

Perhaps the pomegranate seeds trapped me. Perhaps they brought me sufficiently to life that I could come out from Hades' realm at all. I know the rules of this realm today, but it has been shaped by me as its queen; I do not grasp the logic it held when it was only Hades'.

The seeds tasted like life. That is to say they tasted sour and a little sweet, as pomegranate seeds do; but I had been dead for so long I had forgotten, and the first food I tasted would have been like ambrosia no matter what it was. They brought life back to my mouth.

Hades looked upon me and smiled, and said, "That looks good."

"Then try some," I said, and held his gift - his trap - back to him in my hands. He watched my hands, then my mouth as he took the quarter back, and ate from it, allowing me to bind him as I had been bound.

What passed between us then I believe was our wedding in truth. 

He had offered and I had accepted, which was as he expected; but he had not known I would take his gift and turn it back on him. My reciprocation of the offer showed more than any promises of his that I could - that I would - be queen of the dead.

He felt it too. He looked at me, licking pomegranate juice from his teeth, and he saw that I did not recoil at his gaze, nor at the appearance of a bloody mouth, and he said, "Persephone - Persephone with the lovely locks. Bright Persephone, queen of all. You have no veil for me to remove."

"And you have no house for me to be borne to, and there are no witnesses and no chariot," I said, and I stood and clasped his hands in mine, the red juice running down our fingers. "Show me your bed, then, and it will only be us; no father, no mother, no kinsmen."

"Life-giving Persephone," Hades said, smiling as though at a joke only he heard; but I laughed, too, and he took my arm and bore me to our bed.

For all we may speak of Hades seizing the souls of the dead, shades cannot be coerced; they feel neither pain nor urgency. Hades was accustomed to coaxing; and he was gentle and thorough in bed, so that I blushed at my own responses.

I was safe from my father in Hades; more than that I was safe from him above, with Hades' claim on me paid in pomegranate seeds and in my virginity. That was what I had wanted all along, I supposed. I hadn't thought I'd enjoy having it. I hadn't thought much past my death at all.

"I suppose we will have to see my father tomorrow," I said at some length, my eyes closed. Hades' hand was at my hip, light and undemanding. I hadn't known men could touch you like that; it wasn't something anyone told stories about. I shifted into his arms and reveled in it, in all of the things I hadn't expected to live long enough to know.

"I suppose we will," Hades said. He still sounded like he was laughing. "Persephone, first-born..."

"Do you plan to make a game of reciting _all_ my epithets?" I asked, head turning towards him.

"Perhaps I am only ensuring I remember them all," he said, and kissed my shoulder; and said, "You are my queen; Persephone the terrible one, Persephone, roaming the mysteries... You realize it is your father who will have to ask you for favors, now?"

I threw myself to the pillows then and laughed for so long I fear he may have thought me quite mad.

It was not as he said, not yet. The wedding feast was precisely as terrible as I feared, full of gods who could not help but see me as a child still, and presided over by my stormy, furious father. But I saw them turn, not knowing why, as I entered. I saw them flinch when I could not rein in my temper. I knew then that Hades had told me not a lie, but a prophecy yet to be filled.

I looked at my father and I smiled, and I saw something in his eyes recoil, and I knew: I alone here had walked among the shades, because I alone had died. Even my husband, king of Hades, was king of the realm only, a living god. 

I was queen of the dead because I was one of the dead. There was a mystery clinging to my presence and reflected in my eyes that none of them could touch. They could not bear to plumb the mystery of death, could only flee from it and grasp at their immortality for protection.

My mother sought to save me from that fate, but she re-inflicted it even as she triumphed. I would live every spring, and I would die every autumn, with the produce of the earth that was her domain and the seeds buried in the ground, in the domain of my husband.


End file.
